“Jesus wept,” the Scriptures say. What caused the tears, sighs and groans of Jesus?
It was not just physical pain because these tears are mentioned before he suffered at Calvary.
It was not frustration, for His was the greatest victory in this area.
It was not merely nervous tension, nor guilt-burden, lack of faith, or any such thing.
Then, what were the deep burdens on His heart which caused Him to be “a man of sorrows?” You have to look deeply. There is always more in Jesus than at first meets the eye.
I. HE REALIZED MAN’S PLIGHT
Read Mark 7:32-35 where Jesus took aside the deaf and dumb man. There, alone, Jesus “looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, ‘Ephphatha!’ (which means “Be opened!”) Why that sigh — caught and forever recorded for us to read in Scripture?
Jesus had a full-orbed view of what man was and could have been without sin. Before the morning stars ever sang together, God in love had planned for man. He walked with man in Paradise and now how fallen is man! The wise Solomon declared that man seemed to end up even as the animal – in the grave! (Ecclesiastes3:l8-20)
This poor man standing there before Jesus mute and unable to hear is a physical picture of all that man suffered spiritually. Now, the Son of God for one brief moment looks up into heaven toward the throne and into the face of One who understood the burden on His heart. And, “he sighed.”
He knew our desperate need. He knew! That is why He wept over Jerusalem, Luke 19:41-44. He knew the horrible destruction that was to wipe out the city. Even today Jews stand at the desolate site of their ruined temple and there, with faces toward the “wailing wall,” they bemoan their sad loss. And so the sorrows of all men were known by our Savior.
II. HE SHARED MAN’S PLIGHT
Jesus not only understood in the way just mentioned, He personally experienced man’s lost condition. He shared it. He was true man.
For a moment, let us look more deeply into the valley of human sorrows. In Romans 8:19-23 the Apostle Paul explains that all nature, as it awaits man’s final deliverance from sin and decay, “has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth,” and even “we ourselves, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.”
Hebrews reminds us in 2:16-17 that when the Son came into the world, He did not come in dazzling glory, nor even in nature of an angelic being but as man. Indeed the “days of Jesus’ life on earth” were marked by “fervent cries and tears.” “Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered,” Romans 5:7-8.
Even the most hard-pressed Christian ought to leap with new strength when he reads the application of these blessed facts: “Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted,” Romans 2:18. See also 4:14-16).
III. HE BORE MAN’S PLIGHT
But there is more. Let me mention a last contributing factor to the enormous heart-burden of Jesus. When Israel languished in Egyptian slavery, God promised deliverance: ““I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them,” (Exodus 3:7-8).
Here is a dramatic picture of what God is doing in Christ. God Himself comes down to save the lost. “Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering….He was pierced for our transgressions.” Vicariously, Jesus suffered under the load of our grief and guilt.
Mark 8:12 mentions, “He sighed deeply.” This is the same term in the original Greek as used in Romans 8:23 and II Corinthians 5:2, 4 concerning the plight of all nature and man in particular.
Yes, it was the cup of our anguish that was pressed to His lips in Gethsemane: “And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground,” (Luke 22:44). Here is suffering too heavy a burden to be swept away by tears….the gate of weeping blocked by the excessive load.
The cross follows next. But there is no complaint of the nails. The awful cry is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Sin separates from God. “The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all,” (Isaiah 53:6). He bore our sin.
Even if this suffering were only a case of fate or misfortune, it should be enough to soften our hardened hearts. But is was OUR sin! OUR sorrows!
Now, what has been man’s response? Hear it from God’s Word: “Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem,” (Isaiah 53:3).
How deep-dyed is the sin of men when it is remembered that so many have never so much as bowed themselves before God to say “Thank you” for all this! Will you just now believe in Christ as your Savior? Tell Him so in prayer.